Elf Creek Games

While the 7th Continent Kickstarter is the big thing right now, hauling in multiple millions of dollars, there are still others that are worth consideration. First up is the second printing of a excellent cooperative minis game, and that is Fireteam Zero. Fireteam Zero is a cooperative game where you are a squad of military fighters, heading out to combat the occult as they try to overrun the world. On your turn you can perform two actions from the choices of move and attack. Moving is simply in that everyone has a speed of two, attacking is where you have to start playing cards. And it’s these cards that are one of the neat aspects of this game because each card has two uses, a reaction or tactic effect, and an attack. Tactic effects are game altering, but also leave you at a disadvantage so you have to use them wisely, reaction effects allow you to bolster allies or yourself when certain things happen. However, the main use for the cards are attacks, and you can play cards in sets to be able to roll move dice when in melee, shooting, or lobbing grenades. You will roll custom dice with different numbers of each symbol in order to see how much damage you inflict. Fight off the monsters and accomplish your objective to be able to move on, and hopefully take out the boss. So if you are looking for an excellent cooperative “dungeon” crawl type game, check out the Kickstarter today.

I have to be honest, what caught my eye on this Kickstarter was the cheese minis that they are offering, they just look awesome! Ratland is an interesting game where you are trying to grow your pack or rats to be the largest, but be careful, that is a lot of mouths to feed. On your turn you will be allocating all your rates to different spots to either game more cheese, attack other players to take their cheese, or to spawn more rats. Each area you can gather from will have different amounts of cheese based on the card drawn at the start of the round. Also it will be the person who sent the fewest rats that will draw first, but you only draw as much cheese as rats you sent, so there a bit of a balancing game there. At the end of every round though you will have to feed your rats, and any rats that can’t eat will starve and count as negative points against you at the end. Most rats at the end is the winner. So if cheese minis, or this game sound interesting, check out the Kickstarter.

Next is an interesting card game called End of the Trail, where it’s all about trying to stake your claim on the biggest pile of gold. In this game the cards are used in three different ways, first as money for the bidding round. In this round sets of cards will be available to be bid on, and the money you have to use for that is on the cards in your hand, discarding the amount that you pay for the auction. Next they are used for the prospecting phase where depending on which card you play will determine what tiles you can look at to see what value they are. You can claim that tile, or, waiting and see if you can find something better, but be careful, if you find something worse you bust and have to claim that lower valued tile. And finally, the cards are also used to form a poker hand at the end of the game. In each round of the game you will be setting aside cards to form this final hand, and if you have the best hand then you get to make one more claim before final scoring begins. Have the highest value of gold in your clutches and you win. So if you like games with multi-use cards and don’t mind a little memory to go with it, check out this Kickstarter.

After that we have the latest in a growing line of movie to board game conversions, and that is T2029: Terminator 2 the Board Game. This is an officially licensed game so it has the same look as the classic action movie with the tanks, attack ships, and of course, the T-800s and T-1000. In this game you are protecting John Connor as he makes his way to Skynet to hack in and shut it down for good. Along the way you will have to fight back against oncoming robots attacks, protect John Connor, and keep the T-1000 from infiltrating your ranks. On your turn you will be rolling dice and assigning those dice onto your board to perform actions like getting more soldiers, attacking bots on the board, and manipulating the cards controlling the game. These card decks are going to be your main headache as they will dictate where Skynet focuses it’s attention as well as show you what John Connor is up against. If you are able to keep him alive, get him to Skynet, roll and the right hacking combination, AND reprogram the T-800, then you will finally claim victory. But it is also just as easy to lose to the robotic onslaught, so work together and roll well. For more information and to back the gamine, check out the Kickstarter.

Last and certainly not least, we have the campaign for the 2nd Edition of Tiny Epic Defenders along with an expansion, The Dark War. The second edition of the Tiny Epic Defenders does little to change the rules, but what it does do is upgrade the components. After the success and great popularity for the IteMeeples that were created for Tiny Epic Quest, they are bringing them into this game. So now when you get your artifact card, you will be able to take the corresponding artifact piece and attach it to your meeple, on the front or the back. So now you will see the epic items on the board instead of just sitting in front of you on the card. But this upgrade is not all that is new, there is an expansion being offered called The Dark War. This expansion adds more of what you want in the form of new heroes, artifacts, epic foes, and dire enemies. In addition to that extra content, the expansion will add new features in the form of a campaign mode with enemy generals, skills that the heroes can learn, and even advanced regions and caravans. So if you want to expand and upgrade you Tiny Epic Defenders game, check out the Kickstarter today!